Talk:Southwest Paleohispanic script

[Untitled]
The external link is to a site that I maintain. I just corrected the link to other better (a complete tag with several small articles).--81.84.223.47 11:45, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Correct name for this article
The first edit creating this article said "Southwest script is the name given to the form of Pre-Roman writing present in a group of tablets found in the south of Portugal. It is considered the first form of writing in western Iberia (south of Portugal - the Algarve and southern Alentejo)." That's changed slightly as it now says "The Southwest Script or Southwestern Script, also known as Tartessian or South Lusitanian". The article has a discussion of the name which looks pretty much like original research. The linked references aren't very impressive and the other sources are not in English which is inconvenient. However, we do have some very reliable sources that are relevant. Daniels book should certainly be used, eg p. 108 where he mentions a source possibly used in the article, Correa. The pages following that are important. A search on South Lusitanian turns up Daniels again and some other useful sources. And then there is Tartessian.

Comments? Dougweller (talk) 16:48, 7 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Can't access all you links, but from Daniels, "Tartessian"/"Southwest" is part of the broader "South Iberian"/"South Lusitanian". It seems from that we should go with "Tartessian", where BTW we have the language, so that fits.  But then he says it's preferable to avoid ethnic terms are use "Southwestern Paleo-Hispanic", which we do, but because that's not established, he's sticking with "Iberian".  Would that make it the "Southwest Iberian" script, then?  He never actually uses that term, and, as he points out, it would be confused with Iberian script.  Personally, I'd stick with his first choice, "Tartessian", as that is the most recognizable, but I don't see any obvious problem with where we are now.  — kwami (talk) 02:44, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Source of this script
History of Writing by Steven Roger Fischer says " The indigenous Iberian scripts and their several varieties appear to have derived from one original Palaeo-Hispanic script. It is evident that this original script must itself have derived from either a Greek or a Semitic (Phoenician) prototype. However, it remains impossible to determine with certainty which of the two was the source."

Peter Daniels approaches the issue as a question: " How is the mixture of “alphabetic and syllabic signs to be explained? This problem is of course linked with the first, but it is wider in scope (apart from its general linguistic relevance, and its typological oddity in the history of writing systems). Should the Iberian writing system be viewed as a simultaneous integration of a Semitic and a Greek model (with some letter shapes closer to the Greek, others closer to the Semitic model)? as the refurbishing of a Greek model? or as an original Paleo-Hispanic adaptation of a Phoenician signary, leading to a solution analogous to the Greek adaptation? This problem has divided scholars into pro-Greek and pro-Semitic camps." - page 111 of his The World's Writing Systems.

So it's no surprise to find scholars taking sides, eg John Koch says primarily Phoenician but we must not do this. Dougweller (talk) 14:28, 10 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Fischer's a bit of a crank (he's proclaimed himself the greatest decipherer of scripts in human history), though he can be a good source of references. — kwami (talk) 06:24, 11 May 2014 (UTC)


 * I agree about Fischer although I wouldn't call him wrong with this one. And obviously Daniels is a good source. Dougweller (talk) 10:16, 11 May 2014 (UTC)

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